23. Mr Storey’s story

Much about the crash of A16-97 remained inexplicable. As far as the public was concerned, privy only to Justice Lowe’s findings, the story was that the ‘machine stalled’. Whatever might be suspected, nothing had been said directly to suggest that the pilot had erred. Pilot error could be inferred. It could not be proved. No-one was required to believe that Flight Lieutenant Bob Hitchcock had been inadequately instructed in the dangerous characteristics of the new aircraft he was flying. It would not do for there to be a loss of confidence in the RAAF’s selection of prospective Hudson pilots or of its training regime. A more satisfactory deduction for the authorities — a deduction left for the public to make — was that an adequately trained and competent pilot had just made a fatal mistake. There might have been other contributory factors but none could be conclusively confirmed. Thus, how or why such a ‘miscalculation’ could have been made was left to the imagination. A delicate path had been constructed for the Air Court of Inquiry. Those whose responsibility it was to advise the Court about Bob Hitchcock’s competence had directed attention only to his most recent record. There was no hint of anything other than ‘average’ or ‘above average’ performance in the evaluations disclosed. But there was an economy of truth in providing only these assessments. There is no indication that Justice Lowe was made aware of Hitchcock’s misadventures as a young pilot officer, or of any later concerns about his flying. It may reasonably be supposed that his superiors judged that Hitchcock’s subsequent operational performance demonstrated that he had overcome the crisis of confidence in 1936. Four years on he was a different man. The exacting John Ryland had deemed him ‘thoroughly competent…slightly above average’ when he converted to Hudsons. ‘Not brilliant, but normal’ in absorbing instructions.1 What none of those who knew Hitchcock’s history would want was anything that could have led, as Sir George Jones was to put it years afterwards, to the realisation that there were those who thought ‘the man would never have been in the Service but for political influence’.2 In the absence of other evidence it was legitimate for Lowe to conclude that Hitchcock alone had been in control of A16-97 from the time it left Essendon to the moment it plunged into the ground in Duncan Cameron’s farm. But what if there were other testimony? One man who thought he could throw light on the accident was Herbert J. Storey, Headmaster of the Grenfell Street Trades School in Adelaide. In response to the war’s demand for skilled men, the trades school had been designated a Commonwealth Defence Training Centre. It offered Army technical training, RAAF basic training, and training in aircraft

1 Ryland’s testimony, 27 Aug. 1940, Air Court of Inquiry, NAA: A705, 32/10/2729. 2 AM Sir George Jones, interview, 14 Sept. 1977. 525 Ten Journeys to Cameron's Farm

and munitions production. In co-operation with the Adelaide School of Mines, the Trades School had undertaken to train 500 fitters at £15 per head for a four- month course.3 Storey’s responsibilities took him around the state to Port Pirie, Whyalla, and other country towns. On these trips he would often be flown in RAAF aircraft. On August 31, Storey had written to the Secretary of the Department of Air: Air Disaster Dear Sir, I forward for your information, a record of a conversation which took place in my office during a visit to this school by the late Minister for Air, Mr Fairbairn. I realise of course, that it is not evidence but it may throw some light on the Canberra air crash, perhaps by lending support to evidence at the Court of Enquiry or be of value in some other direction. Owing to some misunderstanding, Mr Fairbairn arrived at this school some 15 minutes ahead of Air-force officers who were to accompany him on an inspection of the R.A.A.F. activities. The interval was bridged by a quiet chat in my office. Mr Fairbairn told me something of his trip round Australia. (He was then on the final stage) and we discussed modern service aircraft. I asked him about the Hudson bombers of which I had been reading with interest. Mr Fairbairn stated ‘These machines have rather a nasty stalling characteristic. The combined effect of throttling back and dropping the flaps, preparatory to landing, can land you in a whole heap of bother. They are very sensitive, at this stage, to varying air pressures and, from what I have been told, a pilot coming in to land can find himself, suddenly and without warning, in a machine that is no longer air-borne, heading straight for the ground. I don’t know much about them yet but, as I will be handing my own machine in when I arrive in ; you know, we are commandeering all private machines and mine can not be excepted, I will soon know all about them. I will be using a Hudson for my departmental travelling and on every possible occasion I’ll practise landings and find out more about this stalling trick. Personally, I think it is only a matter of handling your throttle wisely.’ The conversation closed on the arrival of several R.A.A.F. staff officers and an inspection was then made of this school.

3 Air Board Agenda 2677, [Jan. 1940], NAA: A4181, 17; The Advertiser, 9 July 1940. 526 23. Mr Storey’s story

yours faithfully H. J Storey H. J. Storey (Headmaster)4 As if to emphasise his sense that he thought he was conveying something important, Storey added at the foot of the letter he had typed with his own hands ‘/HJS (not dictated)’. This letter, filed in a bundle of mostly routine departmental correspondence, adjacent to copies of papers relating to the Lowe inquiry, was extraordinary in its implications. There was no trace of Herbert Storey’s reported conversation with the late Minister for Air in any of the evidence or conclusions of the Air Force Court of Inquiry. No-one, it seems, contacted him to test his credibility or to see if there was anything further he could contribute. The only discernible response in the files was sent on 9 September 1940: Dear Sir, I desire to thank you for your letter of 31st August, 1940, forwarding a record of a conversation which took place in your office during a visit to your school by the late Minister for Air, the Hon. J. V. Fairbairn. I would inform you that the stalling characteristics of aircraft are well known and pilots are fully instructed in regard thereto, when undergoing conversion courses for this type of aircraft. A special Air Force Court of Inquiry, presided over by his Honour, Judge Lowe, was constituted to inquire into the accident at Canberra, and the cause or causes thereof. You may be assured that the points brought to notice by you were investigated closely by the Court. Yours faithfully PEC (M. C. Langslow), a SECRETARY5

4 ‘Air Force Court of Inquiry under Air Force Courts of Inquiry Regulations into accident to Air Force Hudson Aircraft at Canberra on 13/8/1940 (A16-97)’, NAA: A705, 32/10/2729/28–9. Tink, Air Disaster, pp.213, 220, has Fairbairn speak of ‘handling your throttles wisely’ which would have been true but was not what Storey wrote. 5 The file copy in the Department of Defence Air Services Branch General Correspondence in Melbourne (NAA: A705, 32/10/2729/27) bears the initials of the Assistant Secretary of the Department, (Major) Patrick (‘Johnnie’) Eugene Coleman. Some years after I discovered Storey’s letter and the reply, I told the aviation journalist Frank Cranston about it. In 1990 the Defence Department Air Force Office, under the impression 527 Ten Journeys to Cameron's Farm

Both the wording and the timing of the official reply were notable. Storey’s letter had been written on a Sunday, four days after Mr Justice Lowe convened his first hearing in Melbourne. The last day of hearings, also in Melbourne, was three days later. The Court had re-convened in the afternoon of Tuesday, September 3, to hear additional evidence ‘with regard to the management of the aeroplane’. The departmental response to Storey was dated September 9, four days after Lowe completed his report, with the assistance of the Inquiry registrar, James Davoren. The report was signed and sent to the Governor- General on September 5. If Storey had paid the threepenny surcharge for airmail delivery from Adelaide there would have been time for his letter to be brought to the notice of Arthur Dean, counsel assisting the Inquiry. Time as well for its contents to be intimated to senior officers and ministers before Lowe concluded his work. Even had the letter been carried from Adelaide on The Overland overnight train service it might still have arrived in time to be assimilated by the Inquiry.6 In fact the letter was processed by the Defence (RAAF) Central Registry on Monday, September 2. The file on which the letter was eventually placed appears to have been forwarded to the head of the legal branch, Wing Commander Fred Knight, on August 30. From Knight it was sent to ‘S A B’ (Secretary Air Board) the next day. It may be surmised that, in the normal course, a clerk from the central registry would have carried the letter to the Air Board Secretary’s office and attached it to the file. What might have happened next is a matter of conjecture. The letter bears the pencilled annotation ‘S/AB 2/9/40’ in the hand of the registrar of the Inquiry, J. A. Davoren. The file itself was formally in the care of the Secretary of the Air Board from August 31 to October 10. But there is a unique annotation on the file cover. Whereas all other dates of the file’s movement are the dates on which it was forwarded, there is an interpolation ‘Rec’d 3/9/40’ with the initials of the Inquiry registrar.7 At that time Davoren was still working with Lowe on drafting the Judge’s report.

that nobody knew of the correspondence, informed Cranston about it to assist him with an article he was to write on the 50th anniversary of the crash. Cranston’s article, ‘Spiral dive into Canberra hilltop rocked Australia’ (Canberra Times, 12 Aug. 1990), was subsequently referred to in several books including Bennett, Highest Traditions, p.113; Wilson, Anson, Hudson and Sunderland in Australian Service, p.107. 6 Letters for the eastern states could be left at the Adelaide GPO as late as 3.15 p.m. on Saturday or 5.15 p.m. on Sunday (The Advertiser, 31 Aug. 1940, p.14). 7 Secret file covers (e.g. NAA: A705, 231/9/462) contained the instruction: ‘Files must not be passed between Branches by hand without transit slips.’ 528 23. Mr Storey’s story

Air Force Court of Inquiry file created by J. A. Davoren, 20 August 1940 (National Archives of Australia: A705, 32/10/2729)

529 Ten Journeys to Cameron's Farm

It may be noted here that in designating the requirements for a ‘specially qualified officer to handle all administrative procedures’ for Air Force Courts of Inquiry, ‘Johnnie’ Coleman had stressed that, as the occupant of the position would be representing the department in open court, he should be an officer ‘of good personality and bearing’. He would be required to be conversant with ‘all Acts, Regulations, Orders, Publications &c…as one of his functions is to advise the judge regarding these matters’.8 James Davoren had an intimate knowledge of the relevant legalities. He also faced a stark conflict of duties. When not acting as a registrar, he was a normal member of the Air Board secretariat, understudying the head of the Regulations and Orders sub-section. When Air Force Headquarters had drawn up the duty statement for the third division clerical appointment which he came to hold, they had calculated that some 60 per cent of the time would be allocated to work as registrar. But the balance of the time, subject to the demands of Air Force Courts of Inquiry in all states, would be continuously free for other secretariat duties.9 Thus Justice Lowe had a temporary claim to Davoren’s services but ultimately he reported to Coleman and through him to Mel Langslow. With a letter of such extraordinary potency delivered to his desk from the head of his office, what was Davoren to do? What if anything was he told? Was he asked to draft a reply to Storey? If so, was he told what to say? Was he instructed not to pass the letter on to the judge? There are no answers to any of these tantalising questions. Most intriguing of all: why did Davoren make a point of initialling the file the day after he had directed it to the Secretary of the Air Board? It is as if he wanted it on record that the letter had been received in time to be referred to Lowe. It was Davoren who had created the file on August 20. So far as that file can speak further for itself it tells us only that it was next passed to the Chief of the Air Staff on October 14, initialled by the Deputy Chief, Air Commodore Bill Bostock.10 Had Herbert Storey written in vain? We cannot know if he had accurately reported the words of the visiting Air Minister. If he had seen the report of the Air Court’s proceedings in The Advertiser on August 29 he could not fail to have been struck by a paragraph headed ‘Mr Fairbairn’s Place in Plane’. Group Captain Wilson, it said, had asked a witness about whether the Minister was sitting next to the pilot before the plane left Essendon. Perhaps Storey’s perception of his conversation with Fairbairn had also been coloured by memory of a tiny

8 Sec., Air Board to Sec., Department of Air, 15 Aug. 1939, copy, NAA: A705, 108/2/189. 9 The percentage list of duties was ‘one of the most potent weapons available in obtaining a reclassification of salary or position’ as the Supervisor of Flying Operations in the Dept of Civil Aviation had learned (Affleck, The Wandering Years, pp.141–3). 10 NAA: A705, 32/10/2729/1. Of course, the file could have been seen by people who did not sign it. Storey’s letter is also annotated by Davoren ‘File L1 29/8[sic]/40.’ 530 23. Mr Storey’s story news item in The Advertiser on May 2 noting that Fairbairn was to receive dual instruction on Wirraways in Canberra in his spare time: ‘He will not be satisfied, however, until he can fly solo in any Air Force machine including the latest Hudson bomber.’ Storey was mistaken in thinking that Fairbairn had yet to hand in his own machine. However, as a Broken Hill mining engineer holding a captain’s commission in the Royal Australian Engineers since September 1939, he would certainly have understood what Fairbairn was talking about. What none of those who saw Storey’s letter might have known is that, while waiting in Adelaide to join the AIF 7th Division, Storey had actually been posted to the RAAF’s No. 1 Engineering School in Melbourne. Before he could take up the post he had been poached by the South Australian Superintendent of Technical Education to run the big new trade school. Air Commodore Harry Wrigley, as AOC Southern Area, was one of those in the upper ranks of the RAAF who knew Storey, and was surprised to discover that he had remained in Adelaide.11 If Storey had contacted Wrigley about his conversation with the Minister for Air instead of going through proper channels might the outcome have been different? Having been an assessor for the first of the Air Courts in 1939, Wrigley knew the new procedures; he had taken a personal interest in Bob Hitchcock’s career; he had recently commanded the Laverton station; No. 2 Squadron was within his Area Command; the Service Court had been convened by his Senior Administrative Staff Officer. No one in the upper ranks of the RAAF was better placed to assess the credibility of the suspicions raised by Storey’s letter. But, if the transmission record is to be trusted, the file was closely held and never came into his hands. In the event, in classically ambiguous bureaucratic language, Mel Langslow (or ‘Johnnie’ Coleman) assured his correspondent that ‘the points brought to notice by you were investigated closely by the Court’. The points the officials meant were of course the technical questions related to what Fairbairn was said to have described as ‘nasty stalling characteristics’. The further point the Department implied was brought to notice was Fairbairn’s stated intention ‘on every possible occasion’ to ‘practise landings and find out more about this stalling trick’. What the letter failed to do was confirm that this revelation had been considered by Justice Lowe, or by anyone else. For good reason. The otherwise extensive documentary record shows no witness being called, no evidence being led, that even hinted that the Minister had expressed any interest in the Hudson’s behaviour. The transcript of the session of the Court of Inquiry held in camera on September 3 contains no reference to Jim Fairbairn’s conversation with the Adelaide trade school principal.

11 The Mail (Adelaide), 7 Dec. 1940; The Advertiser, 31 Jan. 1941, p.16. 531 Ten Journeys to Cameron's Farm

Perhaps the Storey letter simply did not arrive in time for Dean or Lowe to see it before the Inquiry was adjourned. Of course, it is possible that the letter had somehow lain unnoticed in an in-tray. The department might not have been as disingenuous as its response appears to suggest. But, in view of the sensitivity and potential for embarrassment of the air crash investigation, it strains credulity to believe that the letter’s significance would not have been immediately appreciated when it was read at Air Force headquarters. Sir Richard Kingsland, a contemporary of Hitchcock, a decorated wartime pilot, and later a high-ranking public servant, was to speak of being ‘very surprised that it had been brushed off as casually it was’ by the Secretary of the Department of Air.12 Even had it arrived too late to be considered by Lowe before he finished writing and transmitting his findings to the Governor-General, all members of the Cabinet as well as the Air Board had been told that the Minister for Air had the discretion to re-open the inquiry. James Davoren would certainly have been aware of this. His immediate superior, Coleman, ‘very mild, gentle…a very knowledgeable man’, as George Jones recalled him, did not need to be told. Mel Langslow knew the regulatory regime as well if not better than anyone. Having himself unfairly borne the initial brunt of criticism for the financial stringency that delayed the installation of navigational beacons that might have prevented the crash of the Kyeema two years earlier, he could understandably have hesitated to bring down another torrent of controversy on the Air Force and the government. But Langslow had scrupulously informed ministers and Air Board colleagues from the outset that the Governor-General, ‘if requested by the Minister, may reopen and rehear the inquiry or any part thereof, even after the findings and notes of the first hearing have been forwarded to the Governor-General’.13 It is hard to avoid the conclusion that a decision had been taken at the highest level to conceal what could be construed as sensational information. If the Storey letter was not attached to the file before it was received by the Inquiry registrar from Fred Knight on September 3 then Knight, acting most probably under instructions, was responsible for withholding it. Given what we know of the proceedings of the previous weeks, the most likely person to have directed Knight was the Deputy Chief of the Air Staff, Air Commodore Bostock. If the letter was filed, and reached the Inquiry office on September 2, it might

12 Sir Richard Kingsland, interview, 3 April 2007, transcript courtesy Geoff Crane. Kingsland recalled learning of the letter while writing the entry on Mel Langslow for the Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 15. Kingsland was Julius Alan ‘Dickie’ Cohen until he changed his name in 1947, taking his remarried mother’s surname. 13 Secretary, Department of Air to Minister, ‘Investigation of Accidents Affecting Air-Force Aircraft’, minute, 15 Aug. 1940, NAA: A705, 32/10/2729. The paper, annotated by the Prime Minister, notes that Cabinet had approved an open inquiry. 532 23. Mr Storey’s story have been overlooked when Lowe and Davoren returned from Canberra early the next morning. It might even have been overlooked there until after the final session of the Inquiry was over on the third. Yet there must be lingering suspicion. In developing instructions for registrars of Air Force Courts of Inquiry the Air Board had specifically required that reports of proceedings be furnished daily ‘either verbally (personally or per phone) or in writing’.14 There must therefore have been opportunities each day for the transmission of confidential information. If no such communication had occurred, it may well have been asked thereafter: what public interest would be served by bringing this obscure headmaster’s disturbing story into the open? There was no way to determine what had actually happened inside A16-97 as it circled near Canberra. Surely further speculation about what might have been would be unproductive? It could only bring distress to the families of those who died. Better by far to have confined the Court of Inquiry to matters that could more easily be investigated and evaluated. Is it legitimate to advance these possibilities? No documentary evidence has been discovered to warrant a conclusive finding of improper concealment of information. If Bostock, Knight, Lowe, Dean, Davoren, Langslow, or Coleman kept relevant private records they have not so far been found. But in the nature of things such evidence is unlikely ever to have existed, or to have survived if it had existed. As Air Commodore Bruce Courtney, a junior officer in 1940, has cautioned, even a Court of Inquiry ‘should be suspect in a wartime situation — it might well have been necessary to cover up the accident in the general interest’.15 The fact that Storey’s letter itself found its way on to a file at all might be thought remarkable. All the more so when the same file contains evidence of a decision to omit another embarrassing document. In a letter that itself probably was not intended by its author to be filed, Mel Langslow wrote to the Secretary of the Attorney-General’s Department about ‘the “alarmist” report said to have been spread by an airman mechanic’. This had been ‘referred to the Intelligence people to follow up….You may be assured that Mr Simpson’s letter will not be placed on an official file’.16

Political intervention?

Those reaching for a conspiratorial explanation of the treatment of Mr Storey’s information are inclined to look for political hands at work. With a little imagination some suggestive scenarios can be constructed. It is easy enough to

14 ‘Air Force Courts of Inquiry — Regulations’, NAA: A705, 108/2/189. 15 ACdre E. B. Courtney to CH, 7 April 1978. 16 Langslow to Sir George Knowles, 19 Sept. 1940, copy, NAA: A705, 32/10/2729/24. 533 Ten Journeys to Cameron's Farm

speculate, for example, that words might have passed between the Air Member for Personnel, Bill ‘Mucker’ Anderson, and his old friend and Melbourne Grammar contemporary, Dick Casey. Anderson was closely involved in selecting the personnel to assist the Air Court. Casey was, of course, in Washington at the time of the crash. But he was only a telephone call away from old colleagues and friends in Canberra and Melbourne. He had learned of the crash from journalists who reported that he was ‘inexpressibly shocked and his emotion was evident in his voice’. ‘For several seconds he could not speak’, according to the Daily Telegraph’s’ special representative who had telephoned him. The Deputy Chief of the Air Staff, Bill Bostock, who had travelled to London with Casey in 1939, was another potential link at the heart of RAAF headquarters. So too was Alec Barlow, one of the RAAF’s most experienced Hudson pilots, attached successively to No. 8 Squadron (Canberra), No. 14 Squadron (Pearce), and No. 7 Squadron at Laverton.17 Barlow was the brother-in-law of Maie Casey’s secretary, former journalist Pat Jarrett. Jarrett herself had visited the Lockheed factory in April 1940. Whether Casey made any attempt to contact anyone in Australia — or if anyone from the RAAF sought to contact him — is not known. What is known is, as Casey wrote to his friend Jack Latham, that he ‘was — & am — very cast down by the air accident. All my friends.’18 Had Casey still been in Australia he would have known of Fairbairn’s interest in the problems being experienced with the Hudson. He was endlessly curious about technical matters. When minister in charge of scientific research he had responsibility for the development of plans for an aeronautical research laboratory. He had been closely involved in the discussions and decisions in 1938 to place an order with Lockheed.19 Casey’s first flying instructor, Fred Scherger, now commanding No. 2 Service Flying School at Wagga, had raced to Canberra on August 13. There he talked first to Peter Looker, Casey’s former private secretary now on Menzies’ staff. It was little more than two years since Casey had come to Scherger asking ‘Am I too old to fly?’ He had read so much about flying, Scherger was to recall, that he was concerned about stalling. But he was ‘a very good pilot…could always talk flying, could not stop him talking flying’.20 Scherger’s close friend Squadron Leader Paddy Heffernan knew both Fairbairn and Hitchcock well.21 Heffernan was out of the country but Scherger’s friend from flying training days was Hitchcock’s fellow flight commander, Ray Garrett. If Scherger had wanted some background information he was surely capable of getting it.

17 NAA: A9300, Barlow AA. 18 The Argus, Daily Telegraph, 14 Aug. 1940; Audrey Tate, Fair Comment: The Life of Pat Jarrett 1911–1990, MUP, 1996, pp.49–50, 56; Casey to Sir John Latham, 20 Aug. 1940, Latham MSS, NLA MS1009/1/5487. 19 Prime Minister’s Department, ‘Aviation — Purchase of Lockheed Bombers’, Part 1, NAA: A1608, F17/1/2. 20 Scherger, interview, 2 Sept. 1978. 21 For Heffernan and Scherger sharing quarters and hospitality for half a century, see Harry Rayner, Scherger, p.42. 534 23. Mr Storey’s story

In Casey’s absence there were others to whom the Prime Minister could turn. If he knew that Harry Winneke, a family friend, was a member of the Accident Inspectorate he might have thought to contact him. But more likely to be well informed were Winneke’s professional colleague Arthur ‘Spud’ Murphy and Lawrence ‘Wack’ Wackett, both of whom Menzies had come to know well on a long sea voyage to England in 1936.22 Tempting as it might have been to contact Murphy, the Chief of the Air Staff’s principal accident investigator, Menzies’ sense of propriety would most likely have inhibited him from intervening in a formal process that was already under way. Nor could he be sure that Murphy would be willing to compromise his own unique relationship with the Chief of the Air Staff. Wackett, focused on his production of Wirraways at Fisherman’s Bend, would know nothing first hand. But his son Wilbur was helping to train Hudson pilots at Laverton. There was in any case another alternative, a senior man whom the Prime Minister knew was both knowledgeable and indiscreet. Menzies had long known Air Commodore ‘King’ Cole, who was based at Central Area Headquarters at Point Piper in Sydney. Adrian Cole, ‘Jimmy’ Fairbairn’s boyhood friend, was ‘very relaxed’ off duty, a dedicated club man with a reputation as ‘a bit of a playboy’.23 He had taken the risk two months earlier of sending direct to the Prime Minister, ‘against regulations and orders’, a brief of his own views on Australian air defence and aircraft production. Menzies assured Cole he would treat the communication as confidential and that it would ‘prove very valuable to me’. Cole had sent the memorandum to the Chief of the Air Staff but neither he nor Menzies sent it to the Air Minister, Fairbairn.24 Would Cole have volunteered information to anyone, let alone the Prime Minister, that would suggest that lives had been put at risk, and had now been lost, because his recommendation four years earlier to terminate Bob Hitchcock had been rejected? The thought might have crossed his mind, but it seems unlikely that Cole would have jeopardised his career by pointing his finger at Hitchcock’s protectors, the former Chief of the Air Staff and the then Air Member for Supply, both of them still on the Air Board. We do not know whether Menzies sought or received information outside the official channels. It is hard to believe that no-one with personal knowledge of Fairbairn’s flying habits would have spoken to him after of the crash. But, if they did, no record has survived. Is it likely that he might have intimated that there was to be no investigation of the possibility that Fairbairn had been more than a passenger on A16-97? If he were minded to do so, to whom would he have conveyed his wish? To Sir Charles Burnett, who would be obliged to provide a report on the accident when the War Cabinet met? That might work

22 Wackett, Aircraft Pioneer, p.116. 23 ACM Sir Frederick Scherger, interview with Mel Pratt, 13 Nov. 1973, transcript, NLA TRC 121/52. p.18. 24 Cole to Prime Minister, 25 June 1940; Menzies to Cole, 28 June 1940, Menzies MSS, NLA MS 4936/581/23. 535 Ten Journeys to Cameron's Farm

to contain inquiries by Burnett’s RAAF subordinates. But could an independent judicial inquiry be deflected by political influence? What of those who had led the Inquiry that Cabinet had decided upon? As we have seen, Justice Lowe himself, raised to the Supreme Court bench in 1927, moved in the same legal and club circles as the Prime Minister. Arthur Dean had been a contemporary of Menzies at the Victorian bar. Yet there is no evidence of communication with either man by anyone other than those properly participating in the conduct of the Inquiry.

Joe Hewitt, perhaps the most intelligent and reflective officer of his generation (Courtesy of the RAAF Museum)

Is it likely that anyone outside the higher echelons of the RAAF would have sought to influence the findings or to hasten the process of a judicial inquiry? The possibility of exposure, if not a disciplined integrity, would weigh against it. Yet there had been no such inhibition a little more than a year earlier when Wing Commander Joe Hewitt had presided over a Service Court of Inquiry into a controversial Anson crash.

536 23. Mr Storey’s story

As Hewitt wrote in his memoirs: ‘Such a Court of Inquiry requires time and concentration on the problem, but the urgings of Cabinet on the Air Board to determine the cause was passed down the line to me ultimately by telephone calls from the Air Member for Personnel.’25 This was precisely the kind of interference — admittedly in this case only a desire to get the matter settled quickly — that had justified the establishment of an independent inquiry system. Even without any inappropriate influence, the appointment of Lowe, and of Dean to assist him, gave the Prime Minister and Cabinet some assurance of sympathetic and discreet handling of what might prove to be awkward discoveries. They could rely as well on the Secretary of the Air Department. As an admittedly jaundiced Sir George Jones was to put it many years afterwards: ‘I don’t think Langslow would have given any advice other than what he thought was politically acceptable.’26

‘Contrary to all human probability’

We can trace tendrils of acquaintance, probable relationships of trust. Inferences are possible from what is known. But there is nothing to substantiate doubts about the independence of the Inquiry from direct political interference. We are left with a mystery. The first thing to be noticed is that one possible explanation of the crash that was canvassed with evident discomfort in the Inquiry was indeed that someone other than the trained pilot in command was at the controls of the aircraft. Such a possibility was perhaps so improbable that, without prompting, it might not have occurred to any of those charged with thinking about what had happened. But, as we have seen, the Lowe Inquiry transcript reveals that the possibility had indeed been in the minds of both counsel assisting and Justice Lowe himself. In the closing moments of the hearings on August 29 Arthur Dean had said: ‘As I understand the evidence there is nothing to justify the Court in holding that any suggested cause was the actual cause.’ By a process of elimination, he said, that: one might very easily omit such a consideration as sabotage or any suggestion that the plane was not airworthy or was overloaded, or the view that some other person than the pilot was piloting the aeroplane. There is not the slightest evidence to justify the last suggestion. It is contrary to all human probability that a skilled pilot, responsible for the control of the plane, would vacate his seat for anybody else and it is contrary to all human probability that another person knowing the difficulty of piloting a plane of this kind would undertake to do so,

25 Hewitt, The Black One, p.162. The Air Member for Personnel at the time was Air Commodore W. H. Anderson. 26 AM Sir George Jones interview, 14 Sept. 1977. 537 Ten Journeys to Cameron's Farm

particularly in view of the fact that a large number of human lives were involved. Not only is there no evidence to warrant suggestions of that kind but in fact the probabilities are all the other way. ‘Contrary to all human probability.’ The Judge concurred, somewhat awkwardly if the transcript is to be believed: ‘It would be pure speculation to put forward such a theory in the absence of the only evidence which could throw light on that of those who perished in the flames.’ TheCanberra Times report on August 30 amplified Dean’s remarks: no other person ‘knowing the course of flying instruction necessary’ would be piloting the aircraft. Lowe was made to sound more coherent: ‘The theory of another pilot must be pure speculation as the only persons capable of giving evidence on that point were those who had perished.’27 In his own publicly released ‘Findings’, Lowe had explicitly stated that ‘the evidence before me points to the conclusion that he [Hitchcock] alone piloted the aircraft on its journey from Essendon to Canberra’.28 In truth, there was no evidence before the Court on the question of other men possibly piloting the aircraft during the flight. The fact that Pilot Officer Wiesener was not qualified to fly the aircraft was adduced in support of the conclusion that Hitchcock alone had the controls. It would have been a simple deduction from this information to the disturbing realisation that the RAAF had entrusted the safety of three Cabinet ministers and the Chief of the General Staff to just one man. A patriotic, and possibly censored, press did not comment on the hazard implicit in trusting a group so vital to the nation’s security to the health and judgment of a single pilot, however competent. The fact that Arthur Dean had thought it necessary to submit a crushing repudiation of a ‘view’ and ‘suggestion’ that had not been presented is telling. Dean and Lowe were rejecting unexpressed ‘pure speculation’ of which they had obviously heard. The matter had been hinted at when Pilot Officer James Wilson, giving evidence in public on August 28, had been asked about what he had seen on the tarmac at Essendon. Dean asked whether Wilson had seen the passengers enter the aircraft. He had. ‘Do you know where they were seated respectively in the machine?’ ‘No.’ A few moments later one of the assessors, Group Captain Wilson (not, as far as can be determined, related to the 38-year- old former car salesman and private flyer, Pilot Officer Wilson), intervened and probed further. He queried why the aircraft might have waited for about 10 minutes after taxiing into position for take-off. This unusually long period

27 Air Force Court of Inquiry, Transcript of Proceedings, 29 Aug. 1940, p.103 (NAA: A705, 32/10/2729). The Canberra Times (30 Aug. 1940) did not have the victims perishing ‘in the flames’. This was a curious discrepancy. If Lowe did use the words attributed to him in the transcript he was perhaps revealing that he was unconvinced by the conclusions of Dr Mackellar. 28 Air Force Court of Inquiry No. 1 of 1940, Findings, p.10 (NAA: A705, 32/10/2729). 538 23. Mr Storey’s story had not caught the attention of the Service Court but had been the subject of speculation at Laverton. Herb Plenty, who had undergone instruction by Hitchcock, recalled that when he returned from Sembawang he talked to men from No. 2 Squadron whom he had known before leaving: Bob Dalkin, Wilbur Wackett, and Phil Howson. Plenty recalled their opinions: Seven or eight minutes at most is all that was required to check the engines, check ignition, set the controls, set the instruments and then away you go. But they were there with the engines idling for 20 to 25 minutes…it seems to indicate, and I would almost bet on it, that Bob Hitchcock was explaining to Fairbairn: ‘Now you do it this way, and this is that, and so on, and when you line up I’ll watch you, and so on.’29 The discrepancy between Wilson’s contemporary observation of around 10 minutes and the 20 to 25 minutes of Plenty’s story 60 years later may not be significant. Howson, Dalkin, and Wackett were not at Essendon when the passengers joined the aircraft. They were talking about what they had heard from others, not what they had seen. The important point about the testimony of Wilson and the control officer Williams was that the aircraft stood for what was thought to be a considerable time, more than normal; and, as they told the Court, the delay was not necessitated by heavy traffic. The Court did not explore one obvious explanation — that the second pilot, who was thought to be in a Hudson cockpit for the first time, was undergoing a briefing on the aircraft. Pilot Officer Wilson was asked whether he saw any members of the Hudson’s crew other than the pilot. He had never actually looked into the aircraft, he said. ‘As far as you know, did they leave the aircraft?’ Dean asked. Wilson’s response was succinct: ‘Not Flying-Officersic [ ] Wiesener.’ By implication, he had seen the other two. There was no recorded reaction to his next recollection of getting the names of the passengers and crew from Hitchcock and then turning and walking away from the aircraft and into the control tower. The examination of Pilot Officer Wilson in public concluded: You cannot say whether the Minister for Air was sitting next to the pilot? — The only person I saw actually in the plane, through the door, was Mr. Elford. I recognised him. He was sitting towards the rear, near the door. And the pilot did not discuss with you prior to taking off anything about the flying of the aircraft?

29 Plenty, interview with Geoff Crane, 19 April 2007, courtesy Geoff Crane. Plenty had been flying Hudsons operationally for over a year (Herbert C. Plenty, Singapore Slip, Len Books, Canberra, 1990). 539 Ten Journeys to Cameron's Farm

— No.30 Naturally, you would understand or think that he would be the sole man in charge? — Quite. (The witness then withdrew.) ‘Del’ Wilson was obviously aware, days before Herbert Storey’s letter was written, of talk about Fairbairn’s disposition to sit up front with the pilot. Wilson asked his question in open court. He pushed for an answer that would justify a denial that anyone other than Hitchcock was at the controls. Whether at the morgue or the air base, Wilson surely had heard the rumours already loose in Canberra. Lowe’s conclusion, published without reference to the question and answer from Pilot Officer Wilson, served rather to provoke curiosity than to quell it. The question about the Air Minister ‘sitting next to the pilot’ had been asked, and reported in the press — albeit buried at the bottom of a column on page five ofThe Argus, under the sub-heading ‘Seating arrangement’ in the Sydney Morning Herald, or more directly on page 14 of The Advertiser on August 29 (where Herbert Storey was likely to have seen it) as ‘Mr. Fairbairn’s Place in Plane’. It was soon obvious that many people simply did not believe the official finding. At first within the government, the upper reaches of the public service, and the Air Force, and then rippling out by gossip, query, innuendo, and allegation, the idea that Jim Fairbairn was somehow responsible for the crash spread rapidly. In city clubs and what Bob Menzies had called early in 1940 ‘other congregations of tittle-tattlers’ — he had in mind the haunts of a loose-lipped British member of the Air Board — the question continued to be asked.31 Spoken in a whisper, or behind a hand, it was rarely alluded to in print, never developed thoroughly as a line of inquiry. Four and five decades later, it lingered as a rumour, occasionally finding its way into books, to be floated lightly into conversation by knowing insiders. For every one who quickly cast the notion aside as improbable, if not unbelievable, there was another who affirmed that it was plausible. The deceased Jack Palmer’s brothers-in-law turned over the idea at family gatherings, never quite sure what to believe.32 A handful of contemporaries are known to have been convinced that it was true.

30 The official transcript differs from some press reports that refer to ‘piloting’ not ‘flying’ the aircraft (SMH, The Argus, The Mercury, The Examiner, 29 Aug. 1940). The Canberra Times and Courier-Mail, did not mention this part of the evidence. Some reports had the next question beginning: ‘Normally’, not ‘Naturally’. 31 Sir Geoffrey Whiskard (UK High Commissioner to Australia) to Anthony Eden (Secretary of State for the Dominions), 1 Jan. 1940, PRO: DO 35/100/1 quoted in Norman Ashworth, How Not To Run An Air Force, vol. Two — Documents, Air Power Studies Centre, Canberra, 2000, p.14. 32 John Foley, telephone interview, 25 July 2009. 540 23. Mr Storey’s story

Some, like fireman Jim Kearney, even remembered that, at the crash site in the days that followed, RAAF personnel on guard duty were saying that ‘Fairbairn was driving the plane and that it wasn’t the pilot at all.’ Ambulance officer Tom Hynes would tell his family similar stories.33 Most troubled of all by the idea was Jim Fairbairn’s own son. Geoffrey Fairbairn, on the History staff at The Australian National University, returned again and again to the unresolved question of his father’s role in the crash. As one of his students remembered: Once Geoffrey found out I was a former RAAF pilot, he would frequently ask me whether I thought his father might have been flying the Hudson when it crashed. Geoffrey’s seminars were often enlivened by several glasses of wine, and the more he had the more he’d raise the subject. All I could say was that people I knew who’d flown the aircraft told me that the Hudson was unforgiving in the approach and landing configurations, and so it would seem unlikely that the captain would have allowed an uncurrent pilot such as James Fairbairn to have taken the controls, especially during an approach in poor weather. That would satisfy Geoffrey until the next seminar.34

‘On every possible occasion I’ll practise landings’

For a researcher startled in 1978 by the discovery of the file containing the Storey letter the first instinct was to see if Herbert Storey was still alive. After some hundreds of letters and telephone calls to track down other witnesses it was unexpectedly easy to find him. Sadly, the former headmaster and Supervisor of Defence Technical Training was very ill, and his memory fragmentary. But from Unit 8, 45 Princes Road, Kingswood, South Australia, he wrote back to me in his own hand on 15 May 1978: Right from the beginning I will give you the name of the pilot associated with Mr James Fairbairn. He was Sq. Ldr Walker — familiarly known as ‘Black Jack’ Walker… Yes we discussed the Hudsons when I was flying with ‘Black Jack.’ I recall asking the pilot ‘What was the terminal velocity of the Hudson?’ The pilot said in reply ‘I don’t know. Let’s find out.’ That was enough for me! I never thought I would survive.

33 Kearney, interview, 23 July 1977: ‘Shadow of Calamity’, Stateline Canberra, ABC broadcast, 22 June 2007, transcript courtesy Geoff Crane. 34 Alan Stephens to CH, (email), 24 April 2009. Ian Hancock, a colleague of Fairbairn’s in the ANU School of General Studies history department, had similar memories (email to CH, 12 July 2012). The weather at the Canberra aerodrome on 13 August 1940 was not poor. 541 Ten Journeys to Cameron's Farm

I do know that Mr James Fairbairn had spent some time at Mallala with ‘Black Jack’ Walker. There was nothing an ailing Mr Storey could add to what he had told the Secretary of the Department of Air late in August 1940. What could be done independently was to fix the precise context and date of the meeting he had described. It was not difficult to establish that the Minister for Air had indeed visited the school of technical training in Adelaide. Fairbairn, accompanied by a recent addition to the RAAF public relations staff, J. T. Harrison, was on one of the last legs of a trip round the country. His beloved Dragonfly had been requisitioned by the government (and was subsequently sold on for £2300 to Charles Snook of Airlines [W. A.] Pty Ltd as a replacement for the Airlines DH84 Dragon that had been impressed by the RAAF).35 So Fairbairn was attempting a 7000-mile journey in seven and a half flying days in a Percival Q6 Petrel acquired by the Civil Aviation Department in July 1939. The former Civil Aviation Board had belatedly ordered the British twin-engine monoplane to continue the urgent task of flight-testing the network of Lorenz ultra-short wave radio beacons after the Kyeema crash. (Dick Casey, discerning the possibility of a good deal, had bought a similar machine while the Percival company awaited news of the Australian Cabinet’s purchase approval.)36 Comfortably configurable for six or seven passengers, the Q6 was also to be available for carrying the Air Accidents Investigation Committee to accident scenes, and departmental officers for aerodrome inspections. Fairbairn had told Parliament on 6 June 1939: ‘The aircraft was not purchased for the transport of Ministers.’37 Having left Essendon on 21 July 1940 and flown to Sydney, Brisbane, and Darwin, Fairbairn’s party had arrived in Adelaide from Perth on Wednesday 31 July 1940. He inspected the Parafield flying training school before going to Storey’s school at East Terrace, concluding his day at the recruiting depot. The Adelaide Advertiser reported the Minister’s optimism that he would complete his trip within 46 hours, 15 hours ahead of the record set by C. J. Melrose in 1934. Was it plausible that Fairbairn would have attempted on August 13 to do as Herbert Storey said he had foreshadowed he would a fortnight earlier? Had his interest been increased recently in Darwin by seeing three Hudsons buzzing the town in line abreast to celebrate his visit? Had his travelling companion John Harrison told him of things he had learned on July 25 from Harry Purvis, the doyen of Hudson instructors, while doing air-to-air photography at angles chosen to conceal the absence of rear gun turrets?38

35 Brian H. Hernan, Forgotten Flyer: The Story of Charles William Snook and Other Pioneer Aviators of Western Australia, Tangee Publishing, Perth, 2007, p.172; The Advertiser, 9 Aug.1940. 36 Ewer, Wounded Eagle, pp.88–9. 37 Details of the Percival Q6 VH-ABY are at www.airwaysmuseum.com. A similar aircraft of The King’s Flight was in use by the C-in-C RAF Bomber Command. 38 John Harrison, ‘The last of the “old Bus” pilots dies’, Courier-Mail, 18 Sept. 1980. 542 23. Mr Storey’s story

The Minister for Air switches off the Q6’s motors at the end of his round- Australia flight (Courtesy of The Age)

543 Ten Journeys to Cameron's Farm

Perhaps the best source for determining Fairbairn’s thoughts and plans would have been the diary which his son affirmed he kept. To Geoffrey Fairbairn’s regret, the diary — which he said he had read — was supposedly lost in a fire that destroyed the homestead at Mount Elephant in 1956.39 I had asked several contemporaries both before and after coming into possession of Storey’s letter what they thought of the rumours about Fairbairn’s involvement in the crash. Some extrapolated from first-hand experience. None portrayed the man they knew as having a ‘risk-taking nature’.40 Geoffrey Fairbairn had flown with his father often enough to be convinced that he was a very cautious pilot. He had heard tales of abandoned flights, including three forced landings in bad weather on one trip from Mt Elephant to Canberra in 1939.41 Geoffrey himself recalled an occasion when, much to his irritation and embarrassment, his father turned back only 20 minutes or so from their destination. The 14-year-old, eager to get where he hoped to be, could not see why the expected bad weather should spoil his plans. Conceivably, he admitted, his father might have taken the controls of the Hudson in level flight, but it was most improbable that he would have undertaken a dangerous manoeuvre when an aircraft was close to landing.42 Murray Tyrrell’s testimony from the perspective of a personal staff member was unequivocal: That Fairbairn was flying it? It’s baloney. It’s absolute baloney. Now I flew with Fairbairn not once but repeatedly in at least three different types of aircraft…I used to navigate for him in his private aircraft…Fairbairn was the most cautious of pilots…And if it was bad weather, and we were flying Fairbairn’s private aircraft out of Melbourne to Canberra, Fairbairn would just say ‘I’m the best turner-backer in the business.’ And we’d go back and come by train or by car or some other way. Now I’ve known him to take over with the permission of the pilot of the other aircraft he and I had flown in but he never took off and never landed an aircraft. Reinforcing these observations, Tyrrell emphasised something else he knew. Fairbairn recognised that his injured arm was ‘critical in handling an aircraft, and he would no more have attempted to land that Hudson than I would have’. Like Fairbairn’s son, Tyrrell was ‘not suggesting he mightn’t have been at the controls when it was at 9,000 feet’.

39 Geoffrey Fairbairn quoted from his father’s diary — presumably from memory — in ‘Personal History’, Nation, No. 150, 8 Aug. 1964, p.10. He referred in conversation with me to another diary, purportedly written by his father, which he believed to have been fabricated; but he declined to elaborate. 40 Tink, Air Disaster, p.284. 41 Sydney Morning Herald, 6 June 1939. 544 42 Geoffrey Fairbairn, interview, 8 Nov. 1978. 23. Mr Storey’s story

Murray Tyrrell, at left, constantly at Fairbairn’s side but never close (Courtesy of Kirsten McCulloch)

Tyrrell’s insistence that Fairbairn was ‘too sensible, too cautious’, was not the evidence of an uncritical admirer. He made no secret of his personal coolness to his Minister in 1940. ‘Fairbairn was a very austere detached person. I never got close to him…I could never like Fairbairn.’ Tyrrell had been with the Minister on the flight to Canberra in A16-97 piloted by Bill Heath a week before the fatal flight. Although he didn’t ‘believe for a second’ that Fairbairn ‘was at the controls when the Lockheed pranged’, there is a reluctant hint here, but no more, that he might have seen his chief changing places with A16-97’s second pilot.43

43 Sir Murray Tyrrell, interview, 5 April 1977; Tyrrell to Lord Casey, 24 Oct. 1972, NAA: M1129 WHITE/C B. 545 Ten Journeys to Cameron's Farm

Scotty Allan’s memory from his days as a senior pilot with , and as a converted Hudson pilot himself, was clear: ‘Jim Fairbairn was not a professional pilot and not up to the standard capable of flying a Lockheed Hudson…’ But would he want to see for himself what might happen if the aircraft was put to the test? Sir Edwin Hicks, who saw the Minister for Air at close quarters as a public servant in the new department, had no doubt. Had he been so minded, Fairbairn was a strong enough personality to have insisted on getting his own way in the cockpit.44 Scotty Allan said: I never flew with him acting as pilot but he came into the cockpit of the “C” class flying boat — Sydney to Darwin on the route to Singapore, where he was interested in methods used for dead reckoning, use of varying winds at different heights. And would he be content just to watch? No, I don’t think that [he] could have landed a Hudson — that is consistently, but yes, he would try stalling a Hudson but not with me, possibly with some pilot not able to question the wisdom of such a proceeding.45

‘…some pilot not able to question the wisdom of such a proceeding’

What troubled many people was less the possibility that the Minister for Air might have taken the controls himself than that he might have persuaded the pilot to execute some ill-advised manoeuvres. In the circumstances, the minimal assessments, ‘adequate’ and ‘competent’ would be read by some as a patronisingly coded signal that Hitchcock was the wrong man for the job. There were several clues in Hitchcock’s record to what George Jones and others uneasily recognised as danger signs. The first might have been the evidence of the special consideration that had facilitated his acceptance into the service. ‘If enlisted by special authority’, his enlistment form required that the number and date of the authority be quoted. For those with permission to see the restricted access file the authorisation was clearly visible: ‘AS9139d, 18/6/30’. Much more disturbing, had the facts been brought forward, would have been the knowledge that less than five years before the fatal crash his flying had been deemed so poor, and his confidence so eroded, that his commanders at the Richmond station thought he should be separated from the Service. But the paper trail had been efficiently hidden.

44 Sir Edwin Hicks, interview, 18 Sept. 1980 45 G. U. Allan to CH, 16 Aug. 1982. 546 23. Mr Storey’s story

What remained was as telling by its silences as by what it said. When the ‘RAAF Annual Confidential Report (Officers)’ was compiled in June 1939, Hitchcock’s evaluation by his immediate superiors was uncritical other than by the resonance of its muted praise and recommendations. Personally he appeared beyond reproach. Was his personal conduct satisfactory? Yes. Were his habits temperate? Yes. Did he always set a correct example to juniors? Yes. Tact in handling men? Average. What then of his technical knowledge? Average. Administrative knowledge? Again average. Power of command, power to impart knowledge, general standard of professional knowledge — all average. But what of his competence? Here the commander of No. 1 Squadron was more appreciative. ‘Above average’ ability on duties now engaged, Squadron Leader Paddy Heffernan said. And ‘above average’ in flying duties. Heffernan’s ‘special remarks’ were warm: ‘A sound & reliable officer, who can be trusted to carry out satisfactorily any duty trusted to him. He has shown himself to be well balanced in his judgments.’ From the former Chief Flying Instructor at No. 1 Flight Training School this was encouraging. Too encouraging thought the Group Captain in command at Laverton whose remarks were added after Hitchcock had initialled the report. ‘Graded a little high…I consider’, wrote Harry Wrigley of the ‘above average’ assessments.46 No one knew better than Wrigley the stress Hitchcock had endured in securing his place in the Air Force. In hindsight, Heffernan’s emphasis was different. In 1978, he wrote of Hitchcock as ‘a rather stolid type’: Although he flew satisfactorily, I never really felt happy with him…He certainly was not an over-confident pilot and he may not have been a confident pilot. We used to have five pilot gradings, Exceptional, above average, average, below average and poor. I would have placed him in the below average class.47 There were, in fact, only four gradings. There was no ‘poor’ category, except perhaps in the minds of those making the assessments. Heffernan could have forgotten his judgment in 1939, or conceivably been persuaded by Wrigley and by subsequent events that he had been too generous. Gossip about Hitchcock’s competence was certainly rife in the spring of 1940. Formal inquiries might distinguish between a man’s ability in general and a singular error in judgment. However, the rumour mill soon blurred the distinction. Maybe we were wrong to let an ill-qualified man into the service, one old-hand might say. But, after all, the Service had been trying to do the right thing by the family. And, if an average pilot was responsible for mishandling the aircraft, it could not be the fault of the machine itself, or of those who had been charged with testing

46 NAA: A9300, Hitchcock RE. 47 ACdre P. G. Heffernan to CH, 7 April, 20 July 1978. 547 Ten Journeys to Cameron's Farm

and maintaining it. What was to be gained by speculating on the possibility that a flight lieutenant, nervous and overawed, might have tried a dangerous manoeuvre to please his Minister? So much might well have been said. So much was said in messes, clubs, and pubs. Among those who had flown with Hitchcock it was not hard to find men who could relate tales that cast doubt on their contemporary’s competence. The Roman Catholic chaplain Father Morrison heard after the accident ‘doubts expressed as to Bob’s ability and the opinion expressed that he was kept on his flying course because of sympathy for his father’s death’.48 Forty-seven years later, Sir Richard Kingsland could say: I knew Hitchcock and I was on a training course with him in 1935. And when I heard about Hitchcock crashing, this was when I was in England…I just turned around and said to my colleagues ‘Hitchcock was just an accident waiting to happen.’ Herb Plenty remembered that he had flown twice with Hitchcock on circuits around Laverton and: almost from the minute I entered the aircraft and sat up the front, I had the feeling that he was very tentative…he was not fully confident that he knew what he was doing. We had a saying in the Air Force in those days, the aircraft was flying him, he wasn’t flying the aircraft. Plenty had been taken up on June 4 and 19 June 1940 by Hitchcock. The second occasion was Hitchcock’s twenty-eighth birthday, a fact he might not have disclosed to the young pilot officer. Plenty was being instructed on the use of flaps in an Anson fitted with dual controls. He later testified that Hitchcock was ‘very good as an instructor…sympathetic’. As a gifted flyer who in the 1960s led the Telstars aerobatic team flying dual Vampires from East Sale, Plenty’s assessment has to be taken seriously. But hindsight, coloured by knowledge of the events of 13 August 1940 and oft-rehearsed tales in the subsequent decades, must be treated with caution.49 So too must be the pejoratively nuanced depiction of events of which there are less prejudicial official accounts. Plenty was with Hitchcock, Pilot Officer James Sutherland, and another crewman in an Anson on 21 May 1940 when Hitchcock had to put the plane down in bad weather on the Melton–Gisborne road near Toolern Vale, northwest of Laverton. They were returning from Albury where

48 Msgnr K. Morrison to CH, 6 June 1983. 49 The testimony of Kingsland and Plenty was broadcast in ‘Shadow of Calamity’, Stateline Canberra, ABC TV, 22 June 2007, and is quoted from a DVD of the program provided by the director and writer Geoff Crane. For Plenty’s leadership, see Alan Stephens, Going Solo: The Royal Australian Air Force 1946–1971, AGPS Press, Canberra, 1995, pp.169–70. 548 23. Mr Storey’s story they had been searching for an Anson missing with four crew. Landing in fog at 5.30 p.m. the tailplane and airscrew were damaged as the aircraft ran through a fence at the end of a field. Pilot and crew were unhurt.50 In Plenty’s colourful version 67 years later, Hitchcock ‘panicked and put the Anson down in a paddock, wheels down, ran through a fence, avoided some huge rocks, and we walked out of it…not really good judgement, not what they call good airmanship’.51 What Plenty did not say was that Hitchcock almost certainly had received no night-flying training at No. 1 FTS; he had not been given any dual night flying training on the twin-engine Anson; and he had been forced to fly too low for the trailing wireless aerial to be used and had therefore received no weather reports. Plenty did indeed walk out of the downed aircraft but it is curious that his presence is not recorded in the official record of the accident. The Anson that Hitchcock was flying that day (A4-39) was one of the earliest delivered to the RAAF. It had a limited instrument panel and no flaps. With large hills close to the northwest blocking such of the setting sunlight as was coming through the fog, and with last light due at 5.42 p.m., Hitchcock’s decision to put the aircraft down in a paddock was prudent. The fact that he was able to fly it back to the base two days later indicates that the damage was minimal. As the late Group Captain John McKenzie concluded after a detailed study of the incident, including an inspection of the terrain and discussion with someone who had been on the scene: ‘Had I been in the situation faced by Hitchcock during this flight in foggy conditions at night, with basic instruments and no formal night-flying training, I would have done the same as he did.’52 Within the RAAF community there has long been another school of thought about Bob Hitchcock’s airmanship. Like McKenzie, a former Staff Officer Air Training, not everyone was sure that he was below scratch as a pilot. They were unconvinced that the fault on 13 August 1940 was his. For all his reservations about Hitchcock’s ability, Herb Plenty did not believe Hitchcock was in control of A16-97 when it crashed. The alternative view was well expressed by Air Commodore Bruce Courtney, who in 1940 was a flying officer with No. 10 Squadron in England. He knew Bob Hitchcock slightly and thought there was no reason to believe that he was anything other than ‘a competent and experienced pilot who should have had no problem with the Hudson’:

50 ‘Preliminary Report (Internal) of Flying Accident or Forced Landing’, 1939/40, 184, NAA: A9845, 74/55; Flying Accidents Analysis May 1940, NAA: A705, 32/10/2478. Hitchcock is not among the aircraft crews listed as taking part in the search for Anson A4-4 (NAA: A11094, 241/1/8; 72/1/44). 51 GpCpt. H. C. Plenty, interview with Geoff Crane, 19 April 2007, transcript courtesy Geoff Crane. 52 GpCpt. J. J. McKenzie to Chris Coulthard-Clark, 28 Sept. 1999, made available by Dr Clark. Fifteen days after this incident, Judge Piper elicited the admission in open court that only 38 of the RAAF’s 82 Ansons were fitted with Sperry blind-flying instrument panels. WCdr Scherger, Director of Training, then revealed that after 2300 hours flying he had never flown in fogCairns ( Post, 6 June 1939, The Advertiser, 7 June 1939). 549 Ten Journeys to Cameron's Farm

…the hearsay story (which I believe) was that the aircraft was in the hands of Mr Fairbairn at the time of the crash…it is not difficult to imagine that an inexperienced pilot could get into a situation where recovery by the captain could not be achieved in time…it is a reasonable explanation and one which I believe was generally accepted by RAAF pilots. But don’t forget that we would want to believe it rather than to accept that any of us could make such an elementary mistake of airmanship. We were a proud lot!53

53 ACdre E. B. Courtney to CH, 7 April 1978. 550 This text is taken from Ten Journeys to Cameron’s Farm: An Australian Tragedy, by Cameron Hazlehurst, first published 2013, this version 2015 by ANU Press, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.